Already Known
by OwlinAMinor
Summary: Gale confessed his love for Katniss first. In The Hunger Games, when he visited her in the Justice Building before she went to the Capitol, he tried to tell her. He just didn't get to finish. This is my version of the story if he HAD been able to finish.


**ALREADY KNOWN**

**I've always thought that Gale confessed his love for Katniss first. Back in The Hunger Games, when he visited her in the Justice Building before she went to the Capitol, he tried to tell her. He just didn't get to finish. This is my version of the story - what would have happened if he HAD been able to finish.**

**Written at 3am, like all my best stories. Also, this is my 20th thing to post on fanfiction. Not to mention it's about 1 year since I joined this wonderful website. I think this is a nice way to commemorate the two occasions. ;)**

**A Thing that Some might Call a Disclaimer and Most would Call Annoying: I would be very insulted if anyone thought I was Suzanne Collins. Not only am I much younger than she is, I have much more respect for my characters (not to mention my fan-bases) than she does. Not that I have any fan-bases ... yet. In other words, I am not Suzanne Collins and I don't own The Hunger Games.**

**Enjoy! **

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**Katniss's POV **

**(Note: The italicized part is taken directly from the book.)**

_The Peacekeepers are back too soon and Gale asks for more time, but they're taking him away and I start to panic. "Don't let them starve!" I cry, clinging to his hand._

"_I won't! You know I won't! Katniss, remember, I_ love you!" He shouts like it's his dying wish.

For a split second, time is frozen as he stares at me, gauging my reaction. I stare back at him, a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching train, trying to compute this impossible notion that Gale – my hunting partner, my best friend – loves me like he might love a girlfriend, or a wife.

But suddenly, it doesn't seem an impossible notion any more.

It seems plausible.

Possible.

Predicted.

Almost like I'd known it already.

Like it had been conveyed through unspoken gestures, hidden meanings that I only understood now.

Just like I know, as surely as I know that the sky is blue, that I feel the same way about him.

Time unfreezes with a jolt and I find myself screeching like Buttercup when I wake him from a nap, punching and kicking the Peacekeepers until, shocked, they release their iron grips on Gale.

Before I can stop to think about what I'm doing, my lips are pressed to his like I want to weld us together.

The kiss is short, a fleeting moment in the endless wheel of our lives. Yet it's fiery enough, passionate enough, wonderful enough, beautiful enough, to convince me that what I already know and have known for months is true.

"I love you, too," I tell him, locking my steely gray eyes with his so he'll know I'm not lying. "And I _will_ see you again."

Before either of us can say anything else, the Peacekeepers regain their senses and are dragging the boy – no, man – that I love out of the room and out of my life.

But not out of my thoughts.

Gale has become my reason to fight. To fight the other tributes, to fight the Capitol, to fight anything that stands in the way of me seeing (and kissing) him again.

I'll be reliving that kiss in my dreams tonight.

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**Gale's POV **

I feel as if I've just been clubbed over the head. Several times.

Did what I think just happened really just happen?

Did Katniss, whom I've admired and secretly yearned for, just kiss me?

Just tell me she loved me?

What I've wanted to hear for months?

It must have happened. I'm a realist, not a wistful thinker.

And I couldn't have imagined that determined light in her eyes when she said that she would see me again. It was as if she had lit a fire somewhere inside herself, a fire that will blaze its way to victory, no matter how long it takes and how many obstacles it has to overcome.

Pondering this, I hurry through the filthy gray streets of the Seam, passing people making their way back home, happy that the ones they love weren't chosen. I try to act the same way. As if for me, like for the others, it is just another Reaping Day.

But it isn't just another Reaping Day.

Katniss – _my_ Katniss – is going into that cursed Arena. Odds are 23 to 1 that she'll never come out – except on a body stretcher. Probably more, knowing the Careers.

But I remember the cold gray fire in her eyes, and I know that she will come back out.

She's Katniss Everdeen.

A fighter, all the way.

And I will do everything in my power to help her.

I bring my finger up to my lips, where hers pressed onto mine like a hammer crushing a nail.

I'll be reliving that kiss in my dreams tonight.

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**Reviews would be much appreciated. Even if you don't like the story, review to tell me what you didn't like. Or just consider it an early birthday present. (My birthday is this Tuesday.)**

**Oh, and reviewers are rewarded with donuts. :)**


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